I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

Ukraine’s interior ministry accused Russia of a “military invasion and occupation” on Friday, saying Russian troops have taken up positions around a coast guard base and two airports on its strategic Crimea peninsula.

Ukraine’s parliament sent an urgent plea to the U.N. Security Council for a meeting on the crisis and adopted a resolution demanding Russia halt actions it says are aimed at splitting Crimea from the rest of the country.

Now, I’m no member of the Brookings Institution or anything like that, but it appears to me very much like Russia is in the process of setting up an excuse to annex the Crimea. Oh, I suspect that if enough of a stink is made we’ll see the full independence of the ‘Autonomous Republic of Crimea,’ which is a polite way of saying ‘Russia will set up another client state like that of South Ossetia*.’ Annnd we’ll probably let them do that, because the current administration doesn’t actually care. Either way, might makes right in this wonderful new world order, huh?

I really do hope that the rest of the planet is taking notes about what happens when you successfully convince us unilateralist cowboy nations to take it easy for a lost decade. I really, really do.

Moe Lane

*As a reminder, the Georgia-Russian thing was largely about the former trying to removing what was essentially a Russian client state from Georgian territory. The Georgians failed. This, on the other hand, is the actual acquisition of strategic territory.

13 Comments

So, the “west” won the election in 2004 after the Orange Revolution. But Yushenko and Tymashenko were as corrupt as the regime before. So in 2010, the “east” won the election (which was a fair election, by the way). But then a faction from the west overthrows the duly elected government. And the American media hails this as “Democracy”.
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o_O

You mean, the part Russia re-populated with Russians after wiping out a large percentage of the Ukrainian population?
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Did you have a point? Or are you just going to pretend that Ukraine has no history prior to 1991?

The history is quite long, but at the moment, the people in eastern Russia want close ties to Russia because they, in fact, consider themselves Russian.
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And, to let you know, my wife is from the eastern Ukraine, and I lived in the region several years. There is much, much more than the “Russia bad/Europe good” meme that the American press keeps pushing.

A note Moe if Crimea is annexed by Russia they won’t be able to vote in Ukrainian elections.-ht/Ace What Putin would probably prefer is to control Crimea while having them still be able to vote in Ukrainian elections, a very tough sell job that. Either they annex it or they get the hell out.